If there are any clear conclusions one can draw from our recent webinar: Exploring Cloud Computing and true cloud databases, it is that there is a tremendous amount of interest and questions surrounding cloud databases.

This webinar was one of EnterpriseDB’s most highly attended online events demonstrating a great thirst for information regarding cloud database computing and in particular to using PostgreSQL in cloud environments.

I particularly liked the message from 451 Research’s Matt Aslett, that there are a host of options and opportunities available in the intersection of databases and cloud computing. The same holds true for EnterpriseDB’s offering in this space: Postgres Plus Cloud Database.

Postgres Plus Cloud Database is designed to be applied in multiple environments including public clouds, private clouds and even traditional on-premise hardware settings, which will only add to the questions people will ask. The first offering for Cloud Database is coming in 2012 and will be for Amazon’s AWS public service.

To help answer many of the questions surrounding Postgres Plus Cloud Database, we have a Frequently Asked Questions page you can visit for more details on the technology: http://www.enterprisedb.com/postgres-plus-cloud-server-faq

If you don’t find your answers there, feel free to email us at: cloud-database@enterprisedb.com and someone will reply to your query.

Also, if you missed the webinar, you can view the on-demand replay here.

Technology trends, like fashion trends, are cyclical for good or bad. Whether it’s ’single-vendor’ strategy to flexibility and back again (welcome to Oracle’s ‘buy it all from us’ stack) or virtualization (mainframe to desktop back to enterprise servers), what’s old is …

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EnterpriseDB’s Postgres Plus Cloud Database product is now in beta. It is a great product and is one of the easiest ways to get started with Postgres or with a relational database in general. Yes, as an employee of EnterpriseDB I am extremely biased. However, I tell you the truth, speaking as somebody who works with people who are deploying Postgres and Postgres Plus Advanced Server day and night… this product is great. For now I will only tell you one of the many things I like about this product.

Typically when people think of cloud computing they are drawn to the concept of elasticity. More specifically, the ability to apply hardware and software resources to a task as needed.  For instance, the software I am running is saturating the CPUs of the server it is running on. In a cloud environment, the software can detect this and brings more CPUs or more servers to handle the workload. When the CPUs resource consumption returns to normal levels the software can return the CPUs and servers to the cloud making them available for other tasks running in the cloud.=

While Postgres Plus Cloud Database has elastic properties, what I like the most about it, has nothing to do with elasticity. It is how quickly and easily multi-host PostgreSQL clusters can be provisioned. In a matter on minutes, I can set up a Postgres cluster with several read replicas and automatic failover. I can them immediately begin testing my application against this set up. I don’t need to find servers (or order them),  install 1..N versions of Postgres, install PGPool, configure and tune Postgres, configure and tune PGPool. It can all be done in a matter of minutes.  Even if you don’t intend to deploy in the cloud, you can begin testing the database deployment which  you have designed immediately.  You don’t need to wait for your servers to arrive and go through ½ a dozen vi sessions. You can do it now!

I have told you about one of my favorite features of Postgres Plus Cloud Database. I will tell you about others later. However, there is one other thing I want to mention in this post, since Postgres Plus Cloud Database will enable you to provision both multi-host PostgreSQL and Postgres Plus Advanced Server clusters in under 10 minutes, you can setup a multi-host Advanced Server deployment and subsequently, via our migration tools, migrate yourself off Oracle and into the cloud. All of a sudden you have opened up new possibilities for your enterprise.  To get more information about Postgres Plus Cloud Database go to this URL: http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services-training/products-overview/postgres-plus-cloud-database

Till PPAS 9.0, UTL_SMTP package has no specific named Exceptions for Transient_error, Invalid_operation and Permanent Error. However, Oracle provide following types of named exceptions for SMTP: 1. INVALID_OPERATION: Raised when an invalid operation is made. In other words, calling API …

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PPAS 9.1 Beta 1 has been released. So, I thought to write about it and New Features which are coming. Best part of PPAS 9.1 is that it has all features of PostgreSQL 9.1, which I have already discribed in …

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Time flies when you’re benchmarking. I noticed today that it’s been over a month since my last blog post, so it’s past time for an update. One of the great things about the PostgreSQL community is that it is full of smart people. One of them is my colleague Pavan Deolasee, who came up with a great idea for reducing contention on one of PostgreSQL’s most heavily-trafficked locks: ProcArrayLock. Heikki Linnakangas (another really smart guy, who is also a colleague of mine) did some more work on the patch, and then I cleaned it up further and committed it.
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Our web site lists many Postgres user groups, but perhaps only a dozen are active, having monthly meetings. Why is that? What makes a Postgres user group successful? How can you help create or revitalize a user group?

The answers aren’t a great mystery, but it does require hard work. I think a lot of people who start Postgres user groups don’t realize the work necessary to make it successful. They probably think, “Oh, I will announce a user group meeting, and people will show up, and it will be fun.” Well, the “fun” part might be right, but growing a user group long-term requires lots of work — let me explain.

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